


His Lips Are a Dream But I Can't Sleep

by Lauralot



Series: Your Mouth Is Like a Funeral [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, Depression, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, M/M, No Aftercare, Self-Harm, Sub Drop, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 20:25:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2081961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauralot/pseuds/Lauralot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is comfort everywhere.  Except from the one man Rumlow dreams would provide it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Lips Are a Dream But I Can't Sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bofurrific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bofurrific/gifts).



> The idea of this story is that Brock Rumlow is a submissive with no real knowledge of the BDSM community (or even the knowledge of the term "submissive"). He thinks his desire for pain is a sign of something wrong within him, and that his desire for comfort after a scene is a sign of weakness. I just want to be clear that I do not share these views, and nor do I think the relationship in this story is anything approaching healthy.

For Brock Rumlow, it’s a matter of need. 

HYDRA recruits him young, fresh out of his tour of duty, and Brock could cry with relief when they find him. _Order only comes from pain,_ they say, the words like a breath of air in a drowning body. He is a soldier, meant to inflict pain, not love it. Crave it. For the first time since he was twelve and felt an electric thrill up his spine when a fist split his lip, Brock believes he can be something more than broken. 

He is as close to HYDRA’s perfect soldier as anyone will get without electroshock and a prosthetic arm. Brock serves with his body and his mind, loyalty never faltering, sleep never troubled by the assignments he fulfills. There’s pain and it’s beautiful and, for once, not wrong. He has everything he’s ever wanted and he is perfectly content. 

Until Pierce invites him into his bed and fucks him hoarse. 

He wants it. He loves it. He hadn’t realized his body was capable of feeling that much pleasure. But once he’s spent, bruised and scratched and aching, his eyes find Pierce’s and he waits—for what?—realizing that he wants more. A hand stroking over reddened, tender skin. A word of praise. Something. 

It’s weak and stupid. Why should he feel disappointed when Pierce dismisses him? Who needs a pat on the head in exchange for a fuck? This is what he wanted. What he still wants. 

His mood is overcast for days and it’s sheer will, not time, that pulls him out of it. He has to laugh at himself afterward, the way he’s pining like some teen girl after a one night stand. 

When Pierce next requests his presence off the clock, Brock’s yes is as enthusiastic as it last was. He tells himself he won’t ache at a lack of affection again. But he does, and the second time around it’s for more than a few days. 

*

There was a time when Brock measured days in highs and lows. He doesn’t have high days anymore, really. He hardly has _days_ ; they’re bleak and dark as the night. 

He makes mistakes on the field, sloppy and careless, and winds up with injuries. Brock doesn’t mind them as much as his men think he should: in the bedroom or the battlefield, the jolts of pain are all that assure him he’s still breathing. He lands himself in a psych evaluation, but Brock is obstinate and misdirecting and knows exactly how to steer the conversation to annoy the shrinks into giving him a full bill of health. 

His release form has a brochure stapled to the back of it. _Domestic Abuse: It’s Never Your Fault._ Brock crumples it, holding a swear. A scream. 

He calls Jack and they go drinking. Generally Brock only drinks enough to feel warm, good, and it doesn’t take much to get him there, but tonight he drinks himself unconscious, as though he’ll awake free of pain, excised of whatever’s fucked up and needy inside him. 

Instead he wakes in Jack’s bed, feeling like shit. He’s wearing his second in command’s oversized clothing, probably because his are drenched in vomit somewhere. Jack brings him coffee and painkillers and lets Brock rest his head on Jack’s shoulder when Brock can’t fully sit up. 

It feels…nice. Really nice. It ought to be humiliating, but Brock could stay there forever. 

Until Jack opens his fucking mouth. 

“Brock.” His voice is carefully, deliberately even. “You and Pierce—I saw the bruises. He doesn’t have the right to treat you like that, even if he’s our b—”

The bruises, Brock does not say, are the only positive thing in their relationship. He doesn’t say he loves the bruises, treasures the marks that show he is needed. What he does say is that he has to go and Jack can mind his own goddamn business. 

He doesn’t look back, doesn’t miss the comfort. He doesn’t. 

*

Pierce kisses the asset. 

Pierce _kisses_ the asset, soft and gentle and in full view of Brock, like he doesn’t care if he’s spotted. Because he doesn’t. Because he doesn’t give a fuck about Brock, whom he has only kissed once, so long ago that Brock can’t separate the real sensation from what he’s dreamed a second go would be like. 

The asset can’t feel affection, can’t even kiss back without being told how. The asset doesn’t feel and maybe that’s the lesson, the reason Pierce does it where he knows Brock can see. 

Brock doesn’t speak. He turns, walks, runs. He takes refuge in a locker room, bent over the sink, panting. 

It’s where Rogers finds him. 

“Rumlow?” he says, and _fuck_ , if there’s one person on the planet Brock doesn’t want to see now, it’s goddamn Captain America. He has nothing against the man save for disdain at his outdated morality, but Rogers is perfect and powerful and just the thing to make Brock feel even weaker. 

Rogers is hovering, questioning, but Brock can’t form words and even if he could, what the hell would he say? Rogers, undeterred, switches tactics, guiding Brock to one of the benches. “It’s all right, you’re all right.” He soothes with an ease that might have come from a chronically ill childhood or from time around shell-shocked soldiers in the past and present. 

Rogers wets a towel and drapes it across the back of Brock’s neck, rubs a hand up and down his back until Rumlow’s breathing slows. In spite of himself, Brock closes his eyes, surrenders to the touch until there’s nothing to the world but the dark and comfort. 

It lasts until Rogers suggests he take a week’s leave for his health. 

He shrugs it off, makes his exit and excuses. Rogers is never going to forget this and Brock’s throat burns with bile. 

The next time Pierce takes him, he fucks hard and desperate and tries to be unfeeling when he is met with indifference. His heart feels like a gaping hole, but it doesn’t even have the decency to be cold. 

*

Brock thinks a lot about ways he could harm the asset. 

He wants him to bleed, wants that carefully programmed mask of indifference to crack. The thought of remolding the asset into something more pathetic and emotional than himself makes Brock smile. He doesn’t smile much these days. He can stare straight into the sun and see only black. 

The asset sticks to Brock like a shadow now, jumps to fulfill his commands. He is closer than Brock has seen him to anyone—save for _Pierce_ —and he thinks it would be so easy. He could order the asset to be still and drive a knife into his face, his eyes, until nothing is left. He could shove a grenade in the asset’s mouth and blame it on their enemies. 

But Pierce cares for the asset. Brock has never seen Pierce care for anything else, and he cannot bring himself to take that one source of solace away. 

So he does not harm the asset. He scrubs at a wound on the Soldier’s hand instead, then checks for other injuries. 

It becomes second nature, caring for the asset. Each mission begins with a check of his weaponry and armor. Each mission concludes with a triple check for injuries. Brock almost stops hating him as time goes by. He’s finding it harder to feel. Maybe his humanity is transferring to the asset little by little whenever they meet. Maybe that means Pierce will finally care for him as well. 

Brock is careless on one mission—on most missions, as of late—and then he is bleeding. The asset grabs him, drags him away from the others. He does not dress the wound. He sits, forces Brock to kneel, then shoves his head against the asset’s knees. “Shh,” he says, stroking his hand through Brock’s hair. 

“Get the fuck off.” Brock moves to push him away, but the metal hand clamps across the back of his neck and pins him down. 

“Shh,” the asset repeats, stroking. It must be a learned behavior. Brock realizes where he must have learned it and goes cold, fight draining out of him. It goes on for a long time. It’s the sensation he’s always wanted and that it’s coming from the man he hates more than anything is secondary to the soothing of the touch. 

There is a sound, a wordless tune behind the asset’s lips. 

“What are you humming?” Brock asks, and the asset’s eyes are blank and searching. 

“I don’t know.” 

He’s had everything Brock craves and he has no memory of it. That should be infuriating. But this is closest Brock has ever come, will ever come, to fulfilling that deep, pathetic need, and the asset is incapable of judging him for it. He closes his eyes, breathes a broken, ragged sigh of relief against the asset’s thighs. He can survive on this touch. Not thrive, but live. He can hold on. He feels more alive and alert and _stable_ in this instant than he has in months. There is a flicker of light at the horizon. 

Brock rests, listens, and tries not to think that the chair might take this gesture away from the asset like it takes all the rest.


End file.
